Berry Good Friends Email Newsletter & Produce Updates

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Located 1-1/2 hours southeast of east Wichita, Kansas, we offer organic, sustainably-grown Blueberries and Blackberries. Our produce is available during the growing season (typically June through July) at Farmers Markets, Pick Your Own at the Farm via online reservations, Pre-Picked Orders via online ordering, Wichita area fine restaurants and Flint Hills National Golf Club.

At Chautauqua Hills Farm we eat what we grow and we continually strive to produce the very best for our customers.

The 2017 berry season is fast approaching, and we’re excited to finally have an update for you!

Did we even have winter this year? It was so mild, it was quick, it was warm, and there was very little moisture! Drought and wildly swinging temperatures were the norm, and then seemingly overnight, spring arrived.

The beginning of April brought over 2” of rain, added to the rain we received earlier that week, and we’re about even for the season. The berries are loving it. You can see in the photos below, the earlier-fruiting bushes are already in bloom, and the later varieties are displaying a good volume of buds.

The 2016 season may have been the most disappointing season ever. A late April freeze, followed by a severe hail storm weeks later, really reduced our harvest and what was available to pick. However, with the new spring rains, and the buds we’re seeing on the 350 additional bushes added in 2016, this year’s season looks to have a lot of good fruit.

Progress is coming along on the new field. Making sure the soil has the right PH balance and nutrients for healthy blueberry bushes takes a year or two, and if our soil tests come back positive, we’ll be adding plants in the new field this fall. In the photo below you can see Ethan fixing the irrigation system in the greenhouse. Plants slated for the new field will first spend time in the greenhouse where we can properly prepare them before transplanting to the new field.

As always, we’re as excited as you for the season to get open and on its way. Beginning May 1st, our online reservation system will open. If you prefer to use our Order & Pickup Service to either pick your berries up at the farm, or at Piccadilly Market & Grill in Wichita, then beginning in May, get your order in early, and we should be able to fill your request when the first berries are ripe, usually the first week of June.

If you prefer to pick your own, we’re excited to get to see you again this year, and as always, we’ll be open Wednesday, Friday and Saturday for reservations. The reservation process is to ensure there’s enough ripe berries available for you on the day you’re out, and that it’s a fun and pleasant picking experience without too many people on any given day. Thursdays are open for picking with no reservations required.

We’ve been receiving plenty of calls and texts about this year’s season. It’s a really busy time of the year for us as we prepare for the season, so if you don’t hear back from us right away, please be patient, and know that we’ll respond when we can.

We’re looking forward to seeing all our “Berry Good Friends” at the farm! Spread the word, and bookmark our website and Facebook page to stay up-to-date on farm news and the season opening!

After a slight delay to our season start due to all the rain and cooler temps we’ve had, we’re nearly ready to have Our Berry Good Friends come join us again at the farm for the delightful task of picking delicious blueberries.

We know you have been eagerly awaiting an opportunity to refill your freezers and start baking and tasting these fantastic, good-for-your-brain healthy treats, and it’s finally here!

We’ve opened our online customer sign-in portal for you to start choosing and making reservations for your preferred pick dates (and placing online orders for pick up in Wichita), and our first official day of picking for the 2015 season will occur on Friday, June 19th. We’re sure you’ll be happy to hear that we’ll be extending the Pick Your Own season a little longer than usual (July 18th) because of the delay in ripening this spring, which means even more time to come back and check us out again a little further down the road once more varieties have ripened up!

If you were curious about blackberries, stay tuned, as we’re still watching them for ripening time and availability. We expect them to ripen up in quantity near the end of June and continue to produce for about two weeks after that. We’ll know more in about 1 week and will post an update here once we do.

As always, thanks for visiting the website and the farm, and for spreading the word about our delicious berries! See you soon!

We’re up and running once again here in 2015 at Chautauqua Hills Farm!

As you can see from the video and pictures below, the blueberries are looking good. Also, with the milder winter, the blackberries are looking good too. Yes, it looks like we’ll have blackberries this year!

As a side note, we have decided to cease offering Asparagus and Garlic going forward. But we think our blueberries and blackberries are pretty awesome on their own, and we know you agree!

Based on what we can see right now, the season looks like it will open up around the same time as last year – June 10th or so. We’ll keep monitoring things and will begin regularly updating the website and sending out occasional e-newsletters again, so stay tuned. Thanks for reading and for your support and enthusiasm in spreading the word about Chautauqua Hills Farm!

We recently sent out an email newsletter with more pictures and news from the farm. If you haven’t read it, you can take a few moments to check it out here.

It’s a lot of fun to pick berries with your friends, and you may actually find it quite relaxing to be out in the country, hearing the birds and the breeze, as you fill up your buckets with tasty berries like some of our Berry Good Friends (below) did.

The berries are still doing great, and the weather this year (rainy and cooler — rather nice for mid-July!) has meant a slower ripening time, which means a longer season! We still have plenty of berries from both of your favorite varieties for you to pick.

It’s been a while since we’ve posted here on the blog, but we’ve been (yes, Cage and the bees have been too) as busy as ever! We opened our 2014 season this past week, so stay tuned for more frequent updates over the summer.

If you’d like to catch up on the latest happenings on the farm, here are the latest three email newsletters for your reading pleasure. We just sent out the latest one yesterday, with lots of information about how to order for pick up or schedule a picking reservation at the farm. If you haven’t subscribed to the newsletter, we’d sure love it if you would sign up!

Facebook is also a great way to stay in touch with us. We post a little more frequently there, sharing a variety of content from pictures taken at the farm to links to recipes, articles, and products we’ve found helpful here at Chautauqua Hills Farm. One example is a picture we shared there of the berries at the end of May:

As you can see, the blueberries are looking great (they’re ripe now, and we’ll be posting some pics of them in upcoming posts). We look forward to seeing you at the farm, and hope you’ll share another amazing summer with us!